


Fraternal Fluency

by Rednaelo



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Bittersweet, Friendship, Gen, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4657392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rednaelo/pseuds/Rednaelo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mark of a best friend is one who understands without even having to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fraternal Fluency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HallowedHeart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HallowedHeart/gifts).



> A short and sweet little fic for the lovely Tabby who has been a supportive follower of mine for god knows how long. Thank you so much for your patience with me, dear. I hope reading this brings you a bit of happiness and know that, unreliable as I might be, I would love to write for you again, anytime. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy!

The third time Raf attempts to swipe the keycard into the reader, it clips the dark matte plastic and flies out of his hand.  The sound it makes on the floor is soft and muted and Raf frowns at it.  It’s the same quietly frustrated frown he gives Katya when she starts speaking Russian in the middle of a sentence and then forgets to switch back.  He always tries to understand; maybe if he focuses hard enough, the translation will happen naturally.  It’s happened before – knowing the meaning without needing the words – but Raf supposes it’s one thing to resonate so deeply with someone that you know everything without having even a basic understanding of their language, and another thing to wish that you could understand Russian.

He’s glad they went back to being just friends, he and Katya.  Dating turned out to still be weird and uncomfortable.  Kat wasn’t the first person he dated, but he’s finally learning to be okay with the fact that she’ll probably be the last.

It’s…a relief.

His keycard is still on the floor.

Raf blinks.  Right….  It’s been three hours since his last cup of coffee and forty minutes since the final collation was all packed up and delivered to the main hub.  But that was a culmination of two days’ work and no night’s sleep and Raf can’t even clock out of the building properly.  This exhausted and ragged, he probably can’t even drive home safely, let alone get his key into the ignition if his fumbling thus far proves anything.

Raf bends over to retrieve his keycard and when he stands upright again, the headache he’s been ignoring clamps around his skull and digs in for good. 

“Agh….”  Raf grimaces and nurses at his temples, trying to relieve some of the pressure.  It doesn’t really help at all. 

Home. Home: he wants his bed.  It’s not dawn yet.  If he can just get out of the door, he can make it home before daylight and sleep easy knowing Unit: E is going to give him a nice fat bonus for safely managing to trace the source of their info leak and do damage control.  The other bonus will go to Miko after she slams the agent who decided to utilize said leak to pad his salary with the profits from black market information auctions.  It’s not _exactly_ bounty hunting, but it’s close enough for her. 

Fourth time’s the charm; the key slides through the reader properly and the bolt snaps open.  Raf puts his hands in his pockets and walks into the barren atrium with his head lowered and a yawn pressing out.  The security guard tells him goodnight and Raf tells him good morning with well-wishes of warm coffee and gets a friendly laugh for his kindness.  Home is still sounding really nice….

Raf thinks that maybe he might just nap in the back seat of his car for a few hours before attempting to go home.  He doesn’t quite trust himself to not fall asleep at the wheel, not after workdays like that.  He takes the elevator down to the garage and tucks himself in the corner as it descends.  Raf considers putting a pillow and blanket in his trunk for times like this that will very likely happen in the future. 

The elevator doors open.  Raf stumbles out and hides another yawn behind his hand.  Dazedly, he slumps along to the familiar and comforting sight of a bright yellow Camaro.  Raf smiles, warm from within his weariness, and the passenger door flicks open for him, an inviting beedle-boop greeting him.

“Hey, buddy,” Raf murmurs as he slides in, patting the curve of the door before it closes with a soft _whump_.  The seat is warm and already reclining to lay him back.  All of Raf’s exhaustion floats away as he curls up and closes his eyes.

“I missed you,” he murmurs into the soft black leather. 

The engine turns over.  They roll gently out of the parking garage.

“I missed you too.”

There is a sudden, uncomfortable tightness in his eyes.  Warm tears roll sideways over the bridge of Raf’s nose and drip soundlessly onto the seat.  By that point, though, he is too exhausted and too deep into the beginnings of sleep to pull himself back and understand why.

Rafael sleeps more peacefully than he has in seven years.

* * *

Bumblebee is…different.

The Autobot chuckles nervously, his optics darting around the firehouse garage as he stands before Rafael leaning on the catwalk.  They can see eye-to-eye if Raf stands there.  Bee seems too sheepish to make that sort of contact right now.

“Not too different…?” he offers when he finally deigns to look up again.

Raf smiles and shakes his head as it still rests on his folded arms against the railing.

“Still you,” Raf says gently.

“And you’re still you,” Bee says.  He’s smiling hard and his eyes are so sad.  “You got bigger.”

“I did, it happened.”  Raf giggles, running a hand through his hair.  “Got taller than my dad.”

“Good!  Right?”

He’s so nervous….

“Good,” Raf confirms.

Bee’s doorwings sag a little in relief.  Rafael hides his frown against his arms.

“What’s wrong, Bee?” he asks.  And it’s all muffled and even Raf himself can’t parse exactly what Bee may have even heard.  But it’s enough.  Bee droops even further, looking like he’d rather collapse onto the ground than stand up any longer.  There’s distinct marks of wetness trailing through the dust on his faceplates.  Raf starts thinking about the bronze statues outside the public library and their strange tear trails from years of sun and rain and oxidization. He watches Bumblebee’s hands fold together and wring.

_“I waited too long.”_

Bee doesn’t speak with words but the soft chirps and blips of a language that Rafael can understand without needing to know it.  It floods his gaze all blurry and warm and Raf paws at his eyes before he can make a mess of himself.

“No, buddy, you didn’t,” he says softly, a hand extending even though he couldn’t possibly reach from where he stands.  Bee reaches back anyway.  Both hands held out, cupped, ready to catch him. 

_“I did, I waited too long.  I would’ve waited longer too, and then I would’ve been far too late.  How much have I missed?”_

Raf climbs into Bumblebee’s palms and doesn’t have to wait long to be lifted, brought close to where he can hug his friend around the neck.  His arms still aren’t big enough to even come close to going all the way around but at least it feels less like trying to hug a wall.  Sort of.  Bee cries big fat tears of coolant and Raf feels them fall soft and warm, soaking into his shirt.  He laughs because he’s drenched now, but it really doesn’t matter.  Bumblebee is so warm and cuddles him so dearly, gentle and trembling.

_“I’m so sorry.”_

Raf pulls back a little to thunk his head against Bee’s chin.  His glasses get a little skewed but it doesn’t matter at all.  Nothing could possibly matter right now.

“You’re here now, okay?” Raf says, trying and failing to keep his voice from cracking.  He laughs a breathless gasp at himself and nuzzles close.

_“I can’t stay.  I can’t stay here, I can’t be with you, I have…there’s a new mission, I can’t….”_

“Bee….”  Raf pats his friend’s face gently and waits to be pulled away.  Bumblebee has his mask pulled up and everything.  His optics are big and blue and soft with the sort of sadness Raf has been carrying for almost a decade now.  “It’s okay.  While you’re here, you’re here.  And when you have to go…. We’ll worry about it when the time comes.”

Bumblebee hums a gentle croon and brings Raf in close again.  When Bee gets tired, he sits down against the wall and Raf pulls himself up onto one bright yellow shoulder to nestle against his neck.  Dusk falls and Miko comes home and finds them both asleep.  

* * *

 Bee has one week that he can spare.  Just one.  And he really shouldn’t be sparing the week at all, honestly, but he tells Raf that if he tries to leave right now, he won’t be able to focus at all on his mission.

 _“There wouldn’t be any closure,”_ he says, completely reverted to non-verbal language.  He won’t even drop it to greet Miko or Jack.  Nobody has a problem with it.  Especially not Raf.  He requests leave for the next week from Unit:E and it gets pushed all the way up to Agent Fowler who approves it without question.

And they leave.  Raf packs a piddly little duffle bag he has full of all his clothes and a toothbrush and tosses it into Bee’s backseat and they plan a trip north along the old twisting highways that no one uses anymore. 

“If we stay here we won’t do anything,” Raf says with a laugh as he puts a little picnic-sized cooler into the passenger seat.  It’s filled with sodas and sandwiches and a couple of apples.  “The desert isn’t good for us; we’ll just sit around and be sad.”

_“I’m with you on that.  But Oregon will be a good place to go together?”_

“It will be.  It’s beautiful there.  Much greener.  Hey, you think if I fell asleep in the driver’s seat that anyone on the highway would notice?”  Raf grins.

 _“Planning on letting me do all the work, huh?”_ Bee teases him.

“I’m not the one with a high-performance engine that’s literally out of this world.”  Raf rubs the dashboard affectionately.  “Not planning on sleeping but it’s a long drive.  Keep the music blasting and promise me we can stop for coffee-fetches when I need them.”

_“You got it, buddy.”_

They leave at six in the morning and it takes seven hours but the whole way, they catch up with each other’s lives and they play the same stupid songs over and over and Raf sings loudly and off key and Bee tries not to veer of the road from laughing so hard.  Raf works through his whole cooler of food and at some point on his second frappuchino decides to start reading a book to Bee instead of pretend like he’s actually driving.

“Keep an eye out for the cops for me?” Raf asks as he pulls up the Kindle app on his phone.

_“Nah, I’m just gonna let them pull us over just so you can come up with a creative excuse as to why you can drive safely without even having your hands on the wheel.”_

“Can my excuse be that you’re a sentient life form from another planet and can drive yourself?”

_“Heard that one before, Raf.  Gonna have to try something better.”_

“Darn….”

_“Come on, I wanna hear why you like this ‘Golden Compass’ book so much.”_

They get almost the whole book by the time they arrive at Deschutes and Bee makes Raf promise that they’ll finish it as soon as possible. 

* * *

 Bee’s hood doesn’t buckle or dent when Raf climbs onto it; it’s armored plating, not lightweight plastic that the cars of Earth are made of.  Bumblebee isn’t just a car, he’s a scout, a soldier.  And Raf’s hands grip the yellow plating with assurance and the gently contained urgency that came from the impending separation.  Still days in the future but in the future, nonetheless.

 _“You still get lonely,”_ Bee is saying, _“in that big house with Jack and Miko.  They’re the only ones who can really understand but it’s not the same sometimes.”_

Raf gives a melancholy little laugh.

“It’s a little easier than when I lived with my family,” he admits.  “I’m not really forgotten anymore.  Jack and Miko are really important to me but….”

Bee hums in a way that Raf is so familiar with and hearing it makes his heart leap a little.  It’s been so long; he thought he’d never hear that sound again.  A noise of understanding and comfort.   Raf breathes a sigh of contentment.  The silence spreads out over them.  Rafael closes his eyes for a minute and feels out the difference between the chill of the air and the sturdy, supportive warmth beneath him.

 _“Did you ever look up at the stars,”_ Bee gently interrupts the quiet, the chirrups and beeps humming soft along Raf’s fingers, _“and think about me?  About us ‘bots?”_

“Of course I did,” Rafael says with a grin.  The galaxy spreads so vastly above them in its endless stars and striations of purple and blue.  “Nights when I felt lonely, being under the stars would help.”

_“We think the same about you guys here on Earth.  All of us do.  Wheeljack keeps trying to convince Bulkhead to make the trip back here so they can pick up Miko for a while.”_

Raf laughs aloud.

“Wish you hadn’t told me that.  I’m crap at keeping secrets and I’ll mention it offhandedly at some point and Miko will become hell-bent on making sure they find out she’s ready whenever they are.”

_“Same old Miko, huh?”_

“She’s grown up too.  But some things never change.”

_“And Jack?”_

“Arcee would be very proud.  In fact, I’m pretty sure making her proud is his entire motivation.”

_“I’ll be sure to let her know.”_

Rafael watches the stars twinkle and his smile gently fades as his thoughts get ahead of him.

“It’s not like you guys can really come back to see us though, huh,” Raf says.  He rubs his fingers against Bee’s hood and Bee stays quiet.  “I mean, the only reason why I got lucky enough to see you is that you have something else to do here on Earth.  But the others, they’re all still busy on Cybertron, still rebuilding and stuff.  Still trying to make your planet home again.”

 _“…it’s not like they wouldn’t be here if they had the chance,”_ Bee buzzes gently.

“Oh, I know.  But it’s important to do the job you’re given, right?  Especially if it means making a place for everyone who calls themselves Cybertronian to live peacefully.”  Raf slides off of Bee’s hood and turns around to give him a smile.  “It’s more important than anything.”

Bee transforms and sits down by Raf.  And Raf climbs up to sit on his knee because it’s close and it makes Bee smile when they can touch. 

 _“It’s not something anyone can ask us to choose between,”_ Bee explains, touching a fingertip against Raf’s cheek, _“between you guys and home.  It’s not a fair choice.”_

“It’s not one you really have to make though, is it?” Raf says, nudging back against Bee’s finger.  “No matter where you are or how often we get to see you, we’re all still friends.  And that’ll always be true.”

The brightest blue of Bee’s optics glowed down on Rafael and above them both, the stars go on forever and ever in a way that could only be measured in theory and supposition.  One of those stars is Cybertron, still shining visible from there on Earth.

“You’re gonna be far from your home again,” Raf goes on.  “You have no idea how long this mission will take, right?  There’s no knowing when you’ll be able to go back.  That’s upsetting in its own way.”

Bee cups his hands and Raff climbs into them, enjoying the rush of cold air upon being lifted and then the comfortable warmth as he perches on Bumblebee’s shoulder.

 _“I’ll go back eventually.  No matter how long the mission takes, I’ll return to Cybertron when it’s all over,”_ Bee says as he climbs gently to his pedes.  Raf hangs on tight.  _“While I’m here, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to see you.  But, if I ever catch a break for a while, would you mind if I gave you a call to see if we could hang out a while?”_

The way Bee ducks his helm a little, gaze askance towards the ground as if he's worried he's asked to much....  It breaks Raf's heart a little.  He leans in and hugs him dearly.

“You shouldn’t even have to ask that, you know,” Raf says.  He bonks his head against Bee’s plating gently.

 _“Okay.... Then I won't ask.  I'll just do it.”_   Bee’s vocalizer blips and coos and Raf is warm on the inside.

“You better text me every now and then too, okay?”

_“I promise I will.”_

Raf bumps his comparatively tiny fist against the one that Bee holds up to him.  Raf sleeps in Bee’s reclined driver’s seat in the back corner of the forest’s designated RV park.  Still continues to be the best night’s sleep of his life. 

* * *

 Katya is already striding across the lab as soon as she sees Raf bump his way through the door, trying to keep a good hold on both lattes without spilling them.  She takes one from him and stops before she even begins speaking.

“Your eyes are all red,” she says instead of explaining to him how he can’t pull another week-long vacation again without giving her more of a heads up next time.  Raf smiles sheepishly at her and sips his coffee.

“Saying goodbye is hard,” is all he says.

“Your friend? That’s why you took time off,” Katya says.

“Uh-huh.”

“Bumblebee.”

Raf blinks at her and then his brow scrunches as he rubs his forehead.

“Kat….”

“I have same security clearance as you. I know where to look; don’t insult me.”

“I’m not, just….  What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me about him.”

Raf watches her take a sip.  She doesn’t say anything after blinking down at the cup in surprise but since she goes straight for another sip, he bets she likes the brew this time.

“How about I show you some pictures?” Raf offers as they walk back over to the workbench.  “I took a lot on our trip.”

“File I found says you met when you were only twelve.”

“Mmhmm. He’s been my best friend for that long.”

“And always will,” Kat says. 

Raf shows her the picture he has that Jack took of Raf with his arms around Bumblebee’s neck.  Only his head is visible because Bee has both hands wrapped around him.  Even though Bee’s mask is still on, Raf loves the picture because he can see how much his friend is smiling.

“For the rest of our lives,” Raf agrees.

When a text message indicator flashes onto the screen, he snatches the phone back in a hurry but Katya doesn’t complain.  She throws a tissue at his face when Raf starts crying again as he smiles and taps back an answer.


End file.
